Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 4

Sunday. 28th.

Tuesday. 30th.

Monday. 29th. CFA

1832-10-29

Monday. 29th. CFA
Monday. 29th.

Clear and cold. I went to town. Engaged all my time in commissions. My house is now to be opened and prepared for our reception. I was therefore engaged today in ordering grate &ca. for the Room to be devoted to the Nursery. I also was occupied in making a transfer and effecting a sale of some of my Bank Stock. It has been on the whole not very productive to me and as I can now part with it with a trifling gain to myself and turn it into a direction that may yield more, I have concluded to part with all I have excepting what is in the State Bank.1 Should General Jackson succeed in his election and the Bank of the U.S. wind up, this Stock will appreciate. At any rate it will be a safe thing, where many of our Banks will be unsafe and I shall transfer my Deposits to it.

I was very much hurried and returned to Quincy later than I had engaged to. Dressed and proceeded with the ladies and my father directly to Mr. Bussy’s.2 Found there, Mr. and Mrs. Abbot Lawrence, General and Mrs. Wingate,3 General and Miss Dearborn, Miss Wingate, Mr. and Mrs. Kuhn,4 Mr. Pierpont and Dr. Gray, Mrs. and Miss Davis of course. The House, dinner &ca. was in a style of splendour quite above the ordinary character of gentlemen’s establishments here. But the master and mistress are not at all in character. They are vulgar people. I sat next to Miss Dearborn and was on the whole as much amused as I could have been in any part of the table. Returned by moonlight. Read Lingard.

388 1.

CFA owned shares in the American Bank and in the Boston Bank (vol. 3:333).

2.

Benjamin Bussey’s residence and farm in Jamaica Plain were left by his will to Harvard University as a part of his devise for the foundation of the Bussey Institution. The tract constitutes the largest portion of the lands which now form the Arnold Arboretum (information from Dr. Richard Alden Howard, Harvard Univ.).

3.

Joshua Wingate, Harvard 1795 (JQA, Diary, 29 Oct.), of a family identified with the New Hampshire militia for three generations (Joseph Dow, History of the Town of Hampton, N.H., 2 vols., Salem, Mass., 1893, 1:268; 2:1045).

4.

George H. Kuhn, an associate of Benjamin Bussey in the Dedham Woolen Mills (Frank Smith, A History of Dedham, Massachusetts, Dedham, 1936, p. 255).